


Red

by NoelleAngelFyre



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: Childhood Abuse/Trauma and its aftermath, Emotional Trauma, F/M, Iris should have been in therapy a long time ago, Lovers doing terrible things to each other-but never too much, Rough Sex, Sex is Therapy, Unresolved Emotional Issues, Victor is a devoted man, anger issues, crazy love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 21:35:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9403811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoelleAngelFyre/pseuds/NoelleAngelFyre
Summary: Dealing with her emotions was never Iris' strongest suit.





	

**Author's Note:**

> AuburnAutumn - this one is for you. :)
> 
> Disclaimer: Mr. Zsasz is not mine, nor do any characters affiliated with Gotham and/or the Batman franchise belong to me. I only own Iris - emotionally-apocalyptic wreck that she is. Thank you, and please enjoy.

Contrary to popular belief, Victor is _not_ the one with anger issues.

Sure, he can suffer a bad day here or there—not often, but even the impossible has “possible” woven into its construction—but it doesn’t rile him up. On the rare occasion he feels the urge, humors the hungering pangs in his core to feel blood and add another tally to his count, he is not left wanting. This is Gotham: murder is a way of life.

No, he’s not the one in need of anger management. That honor belongs to Iris.

It’s so carefully hidden. Iris prides herself on composure, on being of a cool and collected nature to shame even the most saintly patience. She goes through life polite and pleasant: a firm tone when needed and detached scientist fascination when warranted; a genteel smile in her better moods (and, in discrete company, even a laugh or two that’s more genuine than not) and a thin line of cold disapproval to express what a thousand words couldn’t possibly. People rarely look at her with alarm. She gives them no reason to think, even on her bad days, she’s more dangerous than a provoked kitten.

They have no idea.

“Take off your clothes.” She says; the chair rests a distance from a lit hearth, firelight reflecting bright off the red wine in her glass. She hasn’t touched it—the wine—and she won’t. She wants to be sober. She just likes looking at the wine. He’s long suspected it has something to do with the color, and its vivid hue in the glow of dancing flames. What, exactly, she thinks about while staring into the depths, he doesn’t know. Some things are better left that way.

The command is a familiar one. He hears it, knows what’s coming, and obeys. The first time, he hesitated and asked questions. She made him pay for it.

She always takes a moment to look at him, unmoved from her seat. The forms of her face seem exceptionally sharp: half cast in shadow, half illuminated in light. Her eyes are bright, much too bright. She has a feral look about her, piercing in its intensity and unblinking in its slow perusal of his exposed flesh. It is the look of a wild animal, considering prey. He is the prey.

“Do not touch me,” she says, naked, straddling his hips, blue eyes dark with bloodlust left unsatisfied, “not until I want you to.”

She takes it all—her unresolved grief, her anger, her hatred and contempt and rage—and gives it to him. She hurls it at him, deadly as a blade to the jugular, aim righteous as a bullet, and holds nothing back. Her teeth are too white, too sharp, and they bite until blood is drawn. Her nails scratch and claw, hot angry lines of red across the back, half-healed tallies ripped open without pause. She paints him in shades of red. His blood streaks across her face, coats her fingertips, and stains her mouth. He can taste it—metallic, coppery, bitter—on her lips when she kisses him: too much teeth and not a hint of gentility.

She doesn’t always take him quickly. Sometimes, when her heart seems legitimately torn between hating the world and wanting him, she takes her time and does something different. She drags thin red paths down his hips, between his thighs, then retraces each one with her lips. Her tongue. She awakens nerves otherwise ignored and arouses them to a fevered pitch in his veins. She bites the hollow of his hips, suckles the marks into bruises. Then she takes him in her mouth. It feels like worship, like her whole purpose in life is to make his lungs suffocate, his fingers claw within sheets instead of her hair (he must not touch, he must not touch…), his chest rise sharp and fall slowly because he can’t breathe properly. His world narrows down to her mouth and what she’s doing to him. He keeps his eyes closed, because if he doesn’t he’ll look down, at her, at _everything_ , and he will unravel at the first glimpse. He’ll want to—have to—need to—grab her and kiss her lips, every inch of her, and run urgent fingers downward and slip between her legs and feel her heat and taste her and—

She never lets him finish. Not this way.

She’s cruel, once he’s inside her and truly at the mercy which she no longer possesses. She renews marks at his hips, clutching more with nails than fingers. Her eyes flutter closed and her head lolls back. She uses him for her pleasure, moves at her leisure without a care for the way he shudders—more and more violently with each passing second—beneath her, inside her. 

“Please.” He breathes. He could suffer hours more, because it’s her, because it’s Iris, but she wants to hear him say it. She will demand so few others to beg, to implore her, so she needs it from him and he gives her what she needs.

She never surrenders the first time. She brings herself release once, twice…three times, sometimes more. He is her captive through it all, but this isn’t about punishing him. It is masochism, in its most raw and vibrant form. She hurts herself because she’s with him and she knows he will never let her go past the point of no return.

“ _Please_.” He needs to feel her. Needs to kiss her neck and feel her pulse racing frantic under his lips. He needs to touch every inch of her until she writhes and whispers pleas for more because enough is never really enough. He needs to taste her skin and burn alive in her heat. He needs…everything. Everything of her.

She exhales, a low sound shuddering off her lips. Her eyes rove downward, unhurried, and now she looks tired. In this moment, she’s the broken little girl he found at the piano inside a sterile white earth-bound fragment of Hell. In this moment, like this, she needs him more than he needs her.

“Fuck me.” She whispers. She despises vulgarity, considers it a sign of poor upbringing and uncultured mannerisms. This isn’t about crude language. She is an educated woman, a brilliant woman, and she knows what words mean—most words, every word. 

_To have sexual intercourse with (someone)._

_To ruin or damage (something)._

She is someone. She is something. She is both. She says exactly what she means, and means entirely what she says.

He bruises her with a violent grip on the hips, and the only thing that saves her head from slamming into the headboard is an instinctual hand thrown out to protect herself. She wants to hurt, not die. Not suffer permanent brain damage.

This is the only time he’s allowed to give in and be every bit the rabid beast Gotham has christened him. He has been restrained, now she sets him free without reserve. He digs teeth deep into her shoulder, at the dip of her clavicle, and doesn’t retract until her blood is thick on his tongue. He presses fingers deep—at her breasts, along her sides, and deepest in the grove of her hips—and savors the blossom of red marks left in his wake. In short days’ time, they’ll change color, like trees under the sway of new seasons. He reserves the darkest reminders for her throat, where they can’t be hidden. He wants her to see them. He wants the world to see them. He wants Gotham to choke on every single one.

“I love you.” He whispers, a tender contrast to the violent way his hips slam into hers. “I would run the streets red with their blood. I would burn the city to the ground. I would put you on a throne, Queen Triumphant, and bring them to their knees before you. Every last one. All of them, I would set before you. Dead and rotting. Fresh and bleeding. Say the word, command me, and it is yours. I am yours. I am always yours.”

She says nothing. Her fingers clutch and dig into skin she’s already marked thrice over. She lets her body be used for his pleasure as she used his. His release is announced with a primitive snarl, hips molded to hers because he can never be close enough. She whimpers, softly, and buries her face in his chest. Her lips brush the tallies at his heart. Those, he’s killed in her name. Arnold Flass was the first. His was carved as a Valentine, with great care and precision.

_“Beautiful.”_ She whispered, and kissed the mark, twice. She kisses it again now.

It’s nearly dawn when she slowly disentangles from his arms and steps into the bathroom. She keeps a First Aid kit under the sink, always fully stocked. She brings it back to the bed and gets to work on his wounds. Some of them are still bleeding.

“Forgive me.” she whispers, as she always does, fingertips dancing slowly over the damage. “You do not deserve this.”

He takes her hand, kisses her palm and each fingertip and the delicate web of veins at her wrist. He tells her he wouldn’t have it any other way.

And he wouldn’t.


End file.
